Una had looked contrite, which was novel. La'an was glad she'd been in the security office when she'd found her, because having her walk onto the bridge wearing that expression would have caused rampant, universal conjecture of the kind Chapel found particularly difficult. Being talked about was one thing. Having people drawing conclusions about things you spent your own time assiduously ignoring was quite another. It was what made the gossip particularly cruel. People wondered about Chapel because they liked her. Because they worried. All that did was make it worse.
Una had stood by the desk, trying for patience while La'an wrapped up her conversation with admiral Tveit over a laggy, statticy connection to Starfleet security. Even out on the frontier, head office tended to ask questions when you let your cadet blow up a ship full of dubiously allied strangers, then followed it up by destroying another in your tractor beam. Not to mention the borderline diplomatic incident their interference had snowballed them into. La'an was infinitely grateful she wasn't on the hook for that one. That one, Pike could have. The rest of it too, frankly. The whole thing had been an unmitigated, inexcusable disaster.
Right. "What have you done?"
Una's face said it all, really. La'an wasn't even sure she needed to ask.
"Nurse Chapel came to see me."
"And?"
"I think I might have broken something."
It appeared to be her specialty these days, setting Chapel off when she was already teetering near the edge. La'an had really thought they'd got past this part, but apparently not. "Would it have killed you to be nice?"
"I thought…" Una cut herself off, worrying at a scuff on the edge of the table. "She's hard to read."
She really wasn't. "You need to roster me out."
Una didn't look at all happy about that one. "La'an…"
"Talk to M'Benga, get him to sign her off for a few days. If you need me after that…" La'an shrugged, pushing her PADDs into a stack so she could lock her console.
"That isn't your job, La'an. You can't…"
"You can't. I can. You want to try and stop me?"
Una hesitated, watching her with an expression La'an couldn't read. "I don't. I just don't think you can fix this. Some things require professional…"
"Some things require showing up." It was unkind. Una did show up, in as far as she could. There was a reason she was here after all, rather than already down in sickbay. La'an recalibrated, dialling herself back a little. "I'm not trying to fix it. There's nothing to fix. Something horrible happened. This is what that looks like on real people."
Una stiffened. "How would you know?" She was clearly stung. It wasn't entirely unjustified.
"Because I was one, once." In the before, where things were blurry and nebulous, a dream she couldn't quite remember. She had been raised by real people, good people, on an actual, habitable rock. She'd had years of almost normal. It had left its mark. However hard she tried, Una would never quite get that. "Starfleet does things to people. Because it has to, or we die. She hasn't been brainwashed yet. She actually feels it when people suffer."
"You think I don't?"
"None of us do, or we wouldn't be sane." Focus on the mission. It was Starfleet's version of for the greater good. You could countenance all manner of individual atrocities as long as you saw them in the wider context. It was cold, but it was necessary, and it was a sacrifice La'an had found easy enough to make. So far, Chapel hadn't. La'an wasn't sure whether that said more about her, or the rest of them.
Una hadn't liked the plan, but she'd agreed. La'an hadn't asked for time off in years. She was due. And by the look of her right now, curled into herself beside the sofa, Chapel would be in no condition to protest her mandated downtime until at least tomorrow afternoon. Which might be all it took.
La'an sat and lit up the cloak for her, drawing slow circles along her arm until her hair glowed blue in the luminescence, and waited while the sobbing burned itself out. There was no point trying to make it stop. Ignoring your feelings worked, but it had its limits. Eventually your body made its own decisions. It was painful, in that raw, crushing way that made you think you might never breathe again, but it passed. Sometimes, it even helped.
La'an always locked herself away. Stood under the shower, where the water made it easier to ignore, and just let it wash through her. Chapel needed someone to sit with her. Someone who wasn't afraid, to remind her she wasn't going mad. La'an drew her just a little closer as the worst of it began to settle, and willed searing penance on whoever had taught her to equate being miserable with being broken. It was probably futile. In La'an's experience, societal consensus taught you that by osmosis. But the exercise made her feel better. Vicarious revenge would be wonderfully cathartic, if it ever came.
It didn't take long before Chapel was shifting to push the tears off her face, to blow her nose into the tangled wad of tissues, unsteady and raw. La'an touched her shimmering hair back to survey the damage. It looked like she'd been crying for a while. "Do you have something for the headache?"
"I'm fine."
"You'll be better, if it doesn't hurt." Nothing conveyed misery quite like a tension headache. La'an stroked her thumb over Chapel's warm temple, ran her fingers along the back of her neck, and watched her eyes flutter closed as the light touch found tightened muscles. After a few seconds Chapel blew out a damp, unsteady breath, nodding at her knees. She looked suddenly small, as if she might break if La'an let her go.
"Med kit's by the sink."
La'an slid her hand beneath Chapel's hair instead, kneading slow, gentle fingers into the base of her skull, down along the tension in her neck. "You're trying to be brave when you don't need to be." The irony was raw. Una was never, never going to hear about this. "We have two days off. More, if you want them. I can spend them here." That just caused fresh tears, shuddering and silent. "You're not broken, Chapel. You're unhappy. It's not a flaw to give a damn. It doesn't make you mad."
Chapel laughed at that, choked and short and bitter. "You're the only one who thinks that."
"I'm not. I'm just the only one you've let in close enough to tell you." Chapel's hands tightened in the cloak, eyes pressing closed as her breath hitched painfully. La'an ran a hand across her shoulders, slow and steady, making the fabric glow. "You're not mad. And I wouldn't leave, even if you were. I told you, I want to be here. I know I'm not good at this, I'm not…"
"No." Chapel turned to face her, wet eyes suddenly intense. "It's not that. You're perfect. I'm just…"
"Afraid."
"Yes."
It was an interesting admission. Something she didn't let on easily. "Why? Do you think I'd hurt you?"
Chapel smiled at that, brittle and fleeting, shaking her head through another wash of tears. "No."
It was the other way around. Still. After all this time.
"Then this is fine. You don't need to think about it." La'an had never imagined anyone would care about her quite like this. It was… She watched Chapel for a second, studying her face. Trying to remember, because it was so easy to forget. And then she leant in and kissed her, careful and soft. It was the only thing left to do. The only way to say all the things she didn't have words for. Chapel's fingers touched against her face, cool tears along her nose, damp lashes fluttering against La'an's as she pressed their foreheads together, trying to breathe. Trying to work something through. Eventually, her eyes closed.
"Stay." It came out on a breath, but she meant it.
La'an felt a warmth settle inside her, foreign and deep, filling the space that had started to inch open so many moths ago. That Chapel consistently, endlessly widened. "Always." She let Chapel wrap her into a hug, pulled her slight, wavering frame in close so she could sink her fingers back through her hair, squeeze along the tension in her neck. "You're not getting rid of me. Now let me get something to fix this before it starts to hurt."
"It already hurts. You're making it better. Just, don't stop."
Chapel leant into her as La'an worked gentle pressure behind her ears, her breathing finally starting to settle. It felt like having her brain caught in a fog, a sudden, overwhelming array of sensations La'an had never considered she might have. She'd never been this close to anyone, never let anyone get remotely near enough, because intimacy required trust, and trust required parley. And parley was not an option she'd ever been prepared to entertain. People were bad enough at a distance. But Chapel… Chapel was the entire universe wrapped up in a box, complex, and brilliant, and alive. The only person she knew who was totally, unconditionally safe. Who would actually hurt herself just to keep La'an whole. There really wasn't anywhere La'an wouldn't allow her to reach.
She worked the fingertip massage up through Chapel's hair until she went heavy against her, quiet in the silence, and La'an's knees began to protest their odd position on the cramped floor. "Come up here." There really was no reason they should sit next to a perfectly good sofa. Chapel's arms tightened around her almost reflexively. La'an levered herself carefully free so she could frame her face, run her thumbs along her brow, across her temples, easing the delicate muscles loose. "I'm not done. I'm just done with the floor."
"You love the floor."
"I love my knees. Get up."
Chapel touched La'an's hands away, pressing at her face. "I'm a mess."
She was lovely, in a way that puffy red eyes had no impact on at all. "Then let me fix it. You'll feel better."
Chapel studied her, searching her face before her eyes dropped away. "I tried to resign."
"She won't let you. Not like this. You can try again, once you feel better. Then she'll listen."
"If I did…"
La'an would miss her, in a way she found hard to predict. Hard to imagine, after a lifetime of emotional self-sufficiency. What would it even feel like, to want someone who wasn't there? Would it be like grief? She'd never felt that either, really. Not the way people had insisted she was supposed to. Not that it mattered. "Then subspace would be our friend."
"Would you call?"
"Every day." Just to watch her smile like she was now, wavering between hope and misery. "You don't need to think about it today. Or tomorrow. You get some time to breathe. Everything else comes later. Ok?"
"Ok."
"Good." La'an pushed herself to her feet, pulling Chapel with her. "Go and wash your face. I brought something to show you."
Chapel looked better when she came out of the bathroom. The streaks of smudged make-up were gone, and the mottling across her face looked less angry after a dousing in cold water. The dermal regenerator did the rest. La'an passed its soft light across her face and watched the redness fade, the swelling settle.
"Do you want the painkillers?"
"No."
"Then have some sugar."
Chapel smiled when she saw the pastries. "Did you threaten lieutenant Gulnaz?"
"I have other ways to persuade people."
"Total menace." Chapel grinned, then shifted forward across the sofa to press a kiss to her cheek. "Thank you." Her forehead rested briefly against La'an's temple before she curled into her side, head dropping onto her shoulder. La'an leant into her soft hair, breathing her in, soap and cinnamon and honeysuckle.
"I brought you a story, since mine are…" She stretched for her PADD. "Have you read Durrell?"
"No."
"You'll like it. He lives this impossible life." La'an might not have any stories of her own, but she had plenty of other people's. Chapel was warm against her, listening as the Durrells rejected their dim life in a cold, rainy London and made their unruly way to the perfect paradise that was 1930's Corfu. She drank the tea La'an had brought, and ate the cinnamon rolls Gulnaz had insisted couldn't nourish anyone, and finally, almost unwillingly, fell asleep with her fingers curled into the hem of La'an's tunic.
La'an had been there, so many times, curled up under a blanket while her mother soothed the sting of other people's judgment with stories about children who were normal, and wholesome, and good, whose lives were just one long perfect adventure free of cold shoulders, and snide remarks, and notes posted where everyone could see.
She'd wondered, after, if that was why they'd left. Whether if she'd been just a little braver… She'd been bookish, and awkward, and small, too clever to be comfortable, too quiet to be right, never able to get along with her peers even before they were old enough to learn about her name. Her brother had been open and friendly, quick to laugh, but La'an was too serious, a dark girl with sharp eyes who was prone to uncontrollable rages even then, who would need to be swaddled in blankets on their large old sofa, her mother's fingers through her hair, her father busy in the kitchen, before the tears would stop. She'd spent so many hours like that, listening to stories of other places, other times, where everything was right.
It wasn't why they'd gone. She knew now, about the prejudice her parents had faced. That they'd been so careful never to bring home. How in the end they'd struggled to make a life, even on the throwback rock that was Alpha I. How the adventure they decided to embark on had been for all of them. It had nothing to do with La'an being brave. It hadn't mattered. She could tell herself that now, amid the sudden, vivid memory of her mother's hands turning the pages of an actual paper book. It hadn't mattered, and it wouldn't matter now. Sometimes, it was safe to let yourself be loved.
She leant into Chapel in the silence, drawing slow, careful fingers against the sleeping cloak, and read the familiar story, and felt, for the first time in her life, like she was exactly where she wanted to be.